


In From the Cold

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 06, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sam comes back cold. It’s the weirdest thing, and not something Dean can get his head around.</i></p><p><i>“So, let me get this straight. Death putting bricks in my head is yesterday’s news, but me wanting an extra blanket is giving you the vapors?”</i></p><p><i>“No! No...it’s just... Dude, it’s 50 degrees outside. And fuck you, I do not have the vapors.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	In From the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ancasta for the beta

Sam comes back cold. It’s the weirdest thing, and not something Dean can get his head around.

“So, let me get this straight. Death putting bricks in my head is yesterday’s news, but me wanting an extra blanket is giving you the vapors?”

“No! No...it’s just... Dude, it’s 50 degrees outside. And fuck you, I do not have the vapors.”

“Whatever. I want a blanket, Dean.”

The last time Sam said this he was four, it was winter, and Dean had accidentally on purpose destroyed the moth-eaten rabbit Sam always slept with. Dean opens his mouth to remember this out loud but Sam’s teeth pick that precise moment to chatter, and Dean has to put all thoughts of Mister Grape aside. He peels the blanket off his bed and hands it to his brother, who instantly cocoons himself.

Sam already has sweats, socks and a sweater on, so Dean can only stand there in his tee and boxers and marvel.

“Wh-what about you?” says the tuft of hair still visible.

Dean shakes his head, gets under the one sheet he has left on his own bed.“I think I’ll survive. Remind me, we’ll pick up some mittens tomorrow. I can put your name on them and everything. Maybe even tie them together with elastic through your slee—

Apparently Sam doesn’t need the extra pillow, because it hits Dean in the face.

Dean picks it off the floor and tosses it back to him anyway.

 

And so it goes. Dean keeps an eye for signs of brick dust and general crumbling, and puts up with the occasional bouts of hypothermia that seem to hit Sam out of nowhere.

Just outside Omaha, they’re coming off a vengeful secretary who kept them up all night while she possessed a typewriter and bitch-slapped her former boss with it (“I am so sending this one to that dude we met in Hollywood, Sammy”), when Sam’s teeth chatter so loudly they wake Dean up. He stumbles over with all his blankets and just burrows in.

“D-dean? What’re...?”

“Shut up.”

It works. They both sleep and Dean wakes up wrapped around Sam’s back like a heat-giving octopus. He’s freezing and Sam is warm again.

“Fuckin’ typical,” he mutters, as he staggers off for first shower.

But Sam is sunny and de-layered by the time he gets out. He has a smile on his face, Dean’s FBI gear all laid out, and a steaming cup of extra dark espresso at the ready so yeah, Dean decides there and then he can put up with only being an octopus once in a while.

Only not really, because one night Sam isn’t cold at all when Dean spoons up behind him.

“Dean?”

“‘M cold, Sammy. Warm me up.”

“You’re drunk,” comes the pissy voice.

Dean rubs his semi-hard dick into Sam’s ass and ends up on the floor.

“Fuckin’ ow, Sam!”

“You promised. I don’t... Fuck, I’m sorry. Here..”

Dean squints up from the floor to where Sam has shuffled along the mattress to peer down. Sam is holding open a corner of the comforter and looking a weird combination of sleepy and sheepish.

It’s too far. Dean thunks his head back down and regrets his last shot or three at the pool table. “Nah, the moment’s gone. I’mma stay here a while.”

“Dean...”

Dean keeps his eyes closed, waits for the floor to stop moving. “’M good. Really.” He flaps a hand to prove it and promptly passes out.

He wakes up on the floor covered in a blanket and a hangover. The first makes the second a little better, though it takes an uncertain moment on his elbows to decide he probably can lever himself up without puking.

“Look, Dean...”

He stagger-jogs to the shower. Because Sam is up, dressed, and has his earnest face on over by the laptop. Dean needs hot water, coffee and at least three aspirin for that.

“It’s just—”

“Sam. It’s cool. And I’m sorry. And can we please not talk about this?”

Dean has his shades on because he’s hungover, damnit. It’s nothing to do with not looking Sam in the eyes. Besides, he’s driving and absolutely has to look ahead.

“It’s not that I don’t... Dean, you know I—

“Sam...”

“I know you could be happy with them again, if you’d just stop being so damn stubborn!”

“Dude. Seriously, I will shoot you in the head if you keep talking.”

Sam sighs, gets all expressive with his eyebrows, but he does at least shut up and go back to emoting over the map instead of Dean.

Dean goes back to glaring at the highway, and resists the urge to drive them all the way to Indiana so he can ring Lisa’s doorbell and kiss Sam in front of her. But even he knows that would be a douche thing to do. Not to Sam, who deserves something douchey right about now. But it wouldn’t be fair to Lisa, who he does care for and miss. Just not in the way Sam demands that he should.

And Dean really should know better. Because idiot that he is, as soon as he wiped that pitying, sad little smile off Sam’s face with the news that he’d been with Lisa and Ben for a whole year, fuck you very much, he practically heard the gears grind – wall or no damn wall. Sam, being wonderful infuriating Sam again, latched on and lit up like a missionary. Like he could atone for being RoboSam for a year by converting Dean back to golf on Sundays, or some such shit. So having sex with Dean again, of course, will fuck up those plans and make Sam the other woman. Which Sam almost said once, and which Dean would mock him mercilessly for, except that his balls are a pale shade of blue and he does not want to set himself back with his lame ass, misty-eyed brother even more.

Although...

Dean tips his beer bottle at the redhead who’s been trying to get his attention over at the bar for the past ten minutes. She’s a little drunk and a lot made up, but he’s pretty sure from the way she’s wiping her tongue slowly over her bottom lip that that baby is _pierced_...

“-motel?”

“Hmm?”

Sam is doing the eyebrow thing again. And clenching his jaw.

“Or, you know, I can walk.”

Sam is in front of him, towering over his stool.

Dean finishes his beer and watches the redhead slide into a cowboy’s lap. He sighs and looks up, ready to be mad, because Sam has absolutely no right to cockblock him like this. And Dean is so done with his right hand. But Sam is chewing his bottom lip, shifting from foot to foot, and looking every inch the dude who always did mask his uncertainty with a steady glower at his older brother.

Dean suddenly wants to kiss him, but he settles for a cuff across the back of Sam’s head once he stands.

“Hey!”

“Hey, nothin’. Let’s get back and tuck you in, princess. Heaven forbid you don’t get your full ten hours.”

“It’s not... Shut up. I can’t help how much I sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should get you a pea, see how much you bruise.”

Sam turns back at the door, almost colliding with him. “What?”

Dean stops, feels a little pink cheeked. How the hell does he know this stuff?

“Move, Dean. I want to check out that stuff Bobby sent us on sprites and their use of fairy dust.”

Dean shakes his head and grabs Sam’s arm on his way forward. That’s why he knows this stuff. Because his brother is a total girl and they spend way too much time together. Even if Sam does seem to be trying his best to get rid of him these days.

Which is why Dean is a little confused when a frozen pizza starts throwing baseballs at him. He crashed first, left Sam all aglow in sprite lore at the laptop. And now an ice cold pizza is leering at him with a red pepper smile...

He opens his eyes on a gasp as a clammy foot finds his.

“Sam?”

A hand snakes around his waist, pulls Dean snugly back against a solid wall of chest.

“Yeah. Let g-go the knife.”

Sam is hard. He’s also shivering and only in boxer shorts.

“Dude,” says Dean, turning instinctively. “What the fuck you get undressed for?”

Sam bites his bottom lip, barely holds in a shudder. “You,” he whispers.

“Me?” He swallows. “Me, how?” Sam may be hard, but for all Dean knows that could be a side effect of a shoved-in soul messing with a man’s thermostat. No way he’s misunderstanding anything and ending up on the carpet again.

“Figure we’d t-try that other way of w-warmin’ me up.”

Dean opens his mouth to make one hundred percent sure, only Sam kisses him. Sam’s lips are cold, soft, a little dry, and Dean can’t help but close his eyes like the fifteen-year-old prom date he always is at such moments. Because damn, this particular moment has been a long time coming.

His hands find Sam’s pebbled skin, start smoothing circles across his back.

But he has to know, so he pulls back, licks his lips. “No more Yenta? No more trying to pack me off?”

Sam shakes his head. Or maybe shivers, it’s hard to tell. Dean pulls the comforter up over both of them, holds Sam’s face between his hands even though he can’t really see him anymore.

They stay like that for a warm, dark minute or two as Sam’s shivers ease. Then Sam sighs.

“No more Yenta. I’m a f-fucking idiot anyway.”

Dean thumbs his cheekbones. “No argument here.”

Sam huffs a small laugh and then cuts off sharply. Dean tenses.

“I... I can’t do it, Dean.” Sam says quietly, and Dean’s gut clenches at what exactly Sam can’t do anymore. “I want that life for you. I do. You have no idea what it did to me to learn you had it for a whole year and walked away because of me.” Sam sighs, swallows, shivers, and Dean wants to squeeze Sam’s face hard, make the fucker get it out. “But now I don’t care because I can’t fucking give you up, okay? I am so m-much more selfish than I am trying to be, man.”

It’s Dean’s turn to kiss him, squeezing his face hard. God, if only he’d known a long look at a drunk redhead would tip the scale, he’d have leered at a few more way before this. He keeps his hands firm on those cheekbones, working his mouth over Sam’s until Sam widens his jaw with a groan. He needs Sam to stay the fuck still for once and finally understand, tongue to tongue and soul to soul, that this right here in a crappy motel room under a less-than-clean comforter, is his golf on Sundays, his white picket fence, and every lame, wonderful dream of home Dean ever had.

Not that Dean can say any of that.

“You,” he says instead, panting a little as he breaks the kiss and pushes his forehead onto Sam’s, “are truly an idiot if you don’t know that goes both ways.”

Close enough.

Sam nods, reaches for Dean’s face and Dean hisses because fuck, Sam’s hands are cold.

“Here,” he says, redirecting them downwards.

“S-so subtle, Dean.”

“Heh. All the heat you need, baby.”

 

Dean wakes up with a dead arm, Sam’s head facing his on the pillow, and the sourest breath ever blowing in his face. He presses a kiss to Sam jaw and then eases him onto his back. He stares at his profile for a long minute and wonders when morning breath became something to get emo about.

“’S your fault.”

Slurred and husky. Dean’s dick twitches immediately.

Sam clears his throat, though his eyes stay shut. “My morning breath. Your fault.”

Dean has to smile at that, even as he’s already sliding back the covers and moving down Sam’s body.

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he says from somewhere around Sam’s navel.

The things he does to keep his brother warm.

******


End file.
